Roles of liquid structural ordering in glass transition, crystallization, and water's anomalies

TL;DR

This paper reviews how liquid structural ordering influences key phenomena like glass transition, crystallization, and water's anomalies, highlighting the importance of understanding liquid states despite their complexity.

Contribution

It synthesizes concepts from Austen Angell and discusses their impact on recent research into liquid physics and its fundamental open problems.

Findings

Structural ordering plays a crucial role in glass transition.

Liquid anomalies are linked to specific structural arrangements.

Understanding these structures aids in solving fundamental liquid state problems.

Abstract

The liquid state is one of the fundamental and essential states of matter, but its physical understanding is far behind the other states, such as the gas and solid states, due to the difficulties associated with the high density causing many-body correlations and the lack of long-range order. Significant open problems in liquid science include glass transition, crystallization, and water's anomalies. Austen Angell has contributed tremendously to these problems and proposed many new concepts of fundamental importance. In this article, we review how these concepts have influenced our work on liquid physics, focusing on the roles of liquid structural ordering in glass transition, crystallization, and water's anomalies.